The NY Times reports that last week, Yale and Juilliard-trained violinist Tom Chiu fell asleep on a subway platform in Brooklyn Heights and awoke to find his extremely valuable 1913 violin, handmade by Stefano Scarampella, stolen.Not only did Chiu, a member of the experimental group the Flux Quartet, have to deal with the loss of his violin, which he considered an “extension” of his body, he also had to answer to his Hardass Asian Parents:

“…My parents had been robbed at the Hong Kong airport about a month before. They turned away from their cart and somebody took a handbag with their passports. They were blaming me that I didn’t learn from their lesson.”

Fortunately for Chiu, the thief had a conscience, and returned the Scarampella to a station in Coney Island.

Avant-garde noise addicts the world over can rest easy now that Chiu’s violin has been returned. Click here to listen to “For Balloon and String Quartet: Second Movement” by the Flux Quartet and Judy Dunaway. But I’m warning you, it’s a little maddening. If Hitchcock were alive today, he’d probably set a movie to it.